Stick In The Wheel

03 Dec 2024

Philharmonic Hall

STICK IN THE WHEEL – the duo of Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter, are back with a brand new record, ‘A Thousand Pokes’, plus news of a UK-wide tour throughout the Autumn.

Out 11th October 2024, SITW’s fourth studio album is a satirical celebration of mistakes. A joyous lambasting of everyone and everything that’s wrong in the world, against the real-time backdrop of global uncertainty, corruption and political unrest.

A London Charivari. Rough Music. A gleeful old-fashioned cancelling. A Chaunter’s delight. 14th Century recording demons collecting mistakes in a sack. Women mugging rich merchants. Nettles being pissed on. S**t food at Lent. A terrible plan. An undoing. The aftermath of a car crash. Catching people doing something they shouldn’t. Nursery rhymes reimagined as death threats. Behind the sarcastic acerbic delivery, Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter convey thoughtful, essential interpretations encouraging us all to check ourselves, through the multi-layered music of cities through time. ‘A Thousand Pokes’ is about as far away from pastoral folk music as you can get.

In their typical wry city-weary style, a beady eye is cast over those committing wrongs in plain sight, with Kearey narrating a series of tales of people f**king up, or being f**ked up, with some brief respite in Lavender – one of London’s oldest street melodies – the album being named after the 14th Century story of Tittivilus, the recording demon, who collects scribes’ mistakes (pokes) and the idle chatter of the “liars with their hairy tongues” congregation. Kearey’s performance can both charm you into her confidence and bait you into an aggressive fracas. Each song’s character is fully inhabited with a fierce tenacity, whether that’s punchy spoken word (“The Cramp”, “A Thousand Pokes”), heartfelt balladry (“Lavender”, “Watercress”) or powerful psyche-folk (“Burnt Walk”, “Steals The Thief”), almost like a Cockney Piaf.

“We sing these songs because we are the same people that would have sung them 200 years ago. It’s not a fantasy, or a cosplay, it’s a reality, for us. Trying to make the music ours, our own tradition, to tease out a link to past communities and all their threads and tendrils, mix and match as people assimilated into the city.” says Kearey

Despite this seriousness, the album’s working-class dry gallows humour carries a stoic “if you don’t laugh you’ll cry” feeling amongst the corruption, scandals and barefaced lies we all observe on a daily basis, with a warning that “only you can fix your deficits” and “it’s your words and deeds that matter…and let me tell you, they speak volumes”.

The gentle persuasion of Carter’s dobro guitar is at once twisted into thug-like distorted riffs, and teased into intricate deft lacework melodies with a Baroque flair, a chimaera that reinforces and underpins the heavy rhythms that are another trademark of Stick In The Wheel’s work. “Crystal Tears” and “Steals The Thief” bookend the record, these are tracks that show more of a modern influence with drones, hardtuned vocal, psychedelic guitars; a reflection of their immediate culture and the sounds of their environment.

“We wanted to make a record that sounded like us, where we’re from, in all its complexity. At the core is our version of traditional music, made in the city, with influences from everywhere” says Carter.

The core of the record imagines a sound of traditional London music, where the musical continuum is unbroken by the population decimated by the world wars, or by gentrification and social cleansing that has forced communities apart, and yet absorbs all the influences of all the communities that call London their home. Carter and Kearey attempted sessions at The George Tavern, Whitechapel, and in Spitalfields, at Denis Severs’ House, and a restored weaver’s townhouse, carrying the aesthetic of the record in their heads as they moved from location to location, before settling into an old factory building and their own workshop. The resulting sparse and economical sound is harsher, more present, more essentially them. It is a mighty haranguing that demands your attention.